Western Front - 1970 August 4

              Western Front
in
Western's 1975 facilities will be nearly three times as large as the
current campus, with an enrollment of 14,150 students, according
to Campus Planning Director Harold Goltz. This is the architectural
model of the central part of the campus, to be erected between
existing facilities and Fairhaven College.
photo by Litzenberger
Western in 1975
Gazing into crystal. balls seems a
little out of character for Harold A.
Goltz.
Tall and lanky, with horn-rimmed
glasses, Goltz probably doesn't own or
rent anything like a crystal ball to
furnish his Campus Planning Office in
Old Main.
But if you're the least interested in
the future here at Western, then you
had better take a trip to Old Main for
an appointment with Campus Planning
Director Goltz.
He is one of the few people on
campus with the ready-made answers
to those burning questions you have
wanted to ask someone in the know
about Western.
A good place for starters might be
where will the campus and student
body be by 1975?
That one would be a breeze for
Goltz, having just completed an
in-depth analysis of that very question
last week and sent it off to Olympia to
the Office of Program Planning and
Budget for Washington State.
"The most obvious change will be
size, of course," he said. "We're
expecting a Fall 1975, enrollment of
14,150 students.
"By that time, the campus as it
stands today will seem pretty small by
comparison. Between now and then
we expect Western to expand to nearly
double its present physical facilities, at
a cost of some $68 million.
"The campus itself will expand
southward to fill up the area between
the present campus and Fairhaven
College."
Western won't be the old
traditional "Teacher's College"
anymore either, according to Goltz.
With a marked increase in business
and economics students expected and
an ever-increasing interest in the
social studies departments, the training
of teachers will play a smaller role in
campus life.
Western will no longer be the
traditional "Normal School" of the
past, but more and more a Liberal Arts
College. Will it remain a college for
long, however?
"Personally I don't think it's even
an issue," Goltz said. "Whether we're a
university or a college by 1975 won't
change the function of the school.
"Either way, we're going to be a
very large and complex institution and
it won't make a lot of difference
whether somebody calls us a college or
a university."
"Large" is probably the key word
in dealing with the subject of Western
in 1975. Detailed maps of all proposed
buildings between now and then show
a steady march up, over and down the
hill toward Fairhaven.
Current accesses to campus by
vehicle will likely be shut off to the
public with student and faculty
parking further and further removed
from the college area itself.
"That isn't exactly going to be a
popular move on our part, but there
really isn't any other solution," Goltz
said. "We're looking strongly to public
transportation to take up the slack and
bus people on a regular and efficient
basis."
Expansion will have an explosive
effect on the number of upper division
and graduate students on campus,
Goltz noted, with an appropriate
increase in married students' quarters
desperately needed in the next five
years.
"We're also going to see a much
greater emphasis on the fields of
economics, business and technology
with increases needed in building
facilities for all these departments,"
Goltz said.
"Right now technology and art are
sharing the same building. We
determined it would be better for
technology to move and art remain, so
between now and 1975 we need a
brand new technology building to
handle the increase in that faculty, for
example."
The final great change in the next
five years will be the sky-rocketing
increase in on-campus living, with
approximately 5,000 students
expected to occupy student
dormitories and other living quarters
by 1975.
"This will mean a lot more
dormitories between now and then,"
Goltz said. "We were originally
counting on housing something like 50
per cent of the student body, but we
had to work down from that figure
when we got into the actual planning."
That actual planning got started in
the Fall of 1969, when Goltz and his
staff were asked by Olympia to
prepare a detailed study of projected
enrollments and a theoretical budget
for the Fall of 1975. That is where the
crystal ball gazing all began.
"We got started with a lot of false
impressions," Goltz said. "We'd done a
20-year projection just a year before,
which saw us predicting a 1988
enrollment of only 15,000 students.
Suddenly we were faced with the
overwhelming task of compressing a
20-year plan into a seven-year plan."
Goltz blamed this sudden change
on the dynamic growth of this area
and its effect on Western in the last
two years and in the future.
When all the facts and figures were
in from the dozens of departmental
planning committees, Goltz was
looking at a college which would need
twice the classroom space, twice the
physical facilities and twice the area
by 1975, just six years away.
"That's going to require a budget of
$68,305,034," Goltz, said, "with the
state chipping in some $50 million and
the rest from our own sources of
income like housing, and tuitions."
Reflecting on this enormous
undertaking, Goltz pointed out that
Western had a student population of
only 3,000 when he arrived to take
over his present duties in 1957.
"Now we're expected to-provide
triple the amount of facilities for
almost five times the student body,"
he said with a shake of his head.
"I'm not at all sure that our one
thousand students-per-year growth
rate is healthy for us as a college, but
that's what we're faced with and that's
what we're planning on handling."
by David Sherman